


Red Room, Blue Room

by OneForMischief



Series: a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. [2]
Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Almost No Dialogue, Artificial Intelligence, F/M, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Other, Painting, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:13:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneForMischief/pseuds/OneForMischief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha repaints. Tony gets awkward.</p>
<p>No talk of the actual Red Room program occurs. Yet.</p>
<p>Sequel to "Priorities".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Room, Blue Room

Tap, tap, tap on the desk with the end of his pen, until he’s annoyed by himself.

It doesn’t take long.

* * *

 

Jarvis searches every file he’s ever been able to access, but to no avail. He cannot find what Tony is looking for.

He sounds almost apologetic. He’s too human for his own good. Tony used to wonder sometimes, when he was drunk, whether or not Jarvis could fall in love.

He doesn’t drink anymore, but it doesn’t matter. Now that Darcy Lewis lives two floors down, he has his answer.

It’s hard not to feel sorry.

* * *

 

It echoes in his dreams sometimes.

‘Tony Stark, not recommended.’

That was before, though. Before she knew that he can make the sacrifice play. Before she saved his life.

Still, he wants to read the rest of it. He wants to know what he knows will hurt him, and he wants to be alright afterwards, and he wants to know what she would write now.

All he can find is a haze of redactions.

* * *

 

She finds him in the lab, or he finds her, because he looks up and there she is, on the other side of the glass. There’s the smallest hint of a smile, and then she holds up a paint card in front of her mouth.

When Jarvis opens the door, her other hand whips out from behind her back and he moves forward, catching the paint roller. She turns and walks back towards the elevator. He follows.

* * *

 

They spend two days priming her apartment. He does the bedroom by himself, because the red that the designers picked seems to make her uncomfortable and he doesn’t like that look on her.

On day three, childish impulse leads him to roll a robin’s egg blue stripe up her back. She looks absolutely stunned, and then she laughs, and he thinks for a moment that if this is what happens when he’s sober, he’ll never miss the drinking.

* * *

 

They order takeout after. Well, he orders at his usual pace and she listens with that small smile and nudges him harder than she needs to when he almost forgets that, though she is tough enough to fight aliens and gods, she doesn’t like her pad Thai very spicy at all.

While they wait for it, he gets awkward, and it just comes out.

“What else was in that report?”


End file.
